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Tim Draper, Venture Capitalist, Wins Government Bitcoin Auction

Tim Draper, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, was the sole winner of the US Marshal Bitcoin auction. Mr. Draper purchased all 30,000 BTC, outbidding many other participants in the auction such as Barry Silbert’s SecondMarket.

Draper is an investor in Vaurum, an exchange platform for financial institutions.

In a statement, Vaurum founder Avish Bhama said that Draper’s new bitcoins will be used to provide liquidity to emerging markets through Vaurum.

“Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies. With the help of Vaurum and this newly purchased bitcoin, we expect to be able to create new services that can provide liquidity and confidence to markets that have been hamstrung by weak currencies,” said Draper. “Of course, no one is totally secure in holding their own country’s currency. We want to enable people to hold and trade bitcoin to secure themselves against weakening currencies.”

Bhama added:

Vaurum has launched trading platforms in emerging markets, and we will be partnering with Tim to leverage the pool of ~30,000+ bitcoins as a liquidity source. It’s still quite difficult to get access to bitcoin in these developing economies — and that’s exactly where it is needed the most. Our goal is to build reliable infrastructure and increase liquidity, which are two major challenges in the ecosystem.